Opening encounter
The fact that last week’s first meeting between Presidents Ali and Santokhi has come this early in both their tenures is the best possible beginning for bilateral relations between Guyana and Suriname under two new political administrations. The reason? First meetings that are not burdened by weighty issues can play a key role in setting the tone for subsequent ones that may be characterised by more demanding agendas. Sunday’s first meeting between the two will be remembered for pleasantries rather than problems.
Guyana and Suriname have long enjoyed excellent relations at the peopleto-people level though the same cannot always be said for formal bilateral relations. Protracted periods of normalcy have been punctuated by incendiary interludes, the most recent one occurring in 2000 when Suriname sought to expel a CGX oil exploration pursuit inside Guyana’s maritime zone.
Guyanese diplomats who have participated in bilateral meetings with the Surinamese attest to what, sometimes, has been the prickliness of the discourses. These interludes of iciness have occurred mostly when issues pertaining to Suriname’s claim arise.
From a business sector source has come reports of a considerable Guyana private sector presence in Suriname at this time. This is not surprising. Even during those interludes of acrimony between the two countries, business sector to business sector relations have been characterised by energetic cross-border trade.
There is, as well the matter of the sustained cross-border human traffic, both legal and illegal, between the two countries which, in its own way, has helped to fashion an enduring feeling of kinship. It is of course no secret that large numbers of Guyanese have made their homes in Suriname.
It was a good thing too that Sunday’s encounter was not burdened by a weighty bilateral agenda so that the two Presidents would not have been ‘taxed’ with the plethora of issues that would normally burden such an agenda. Indeed, the nature of the engagement provided, more than anything an opportunity to transmit public signals of cordiality on both sides which can sometimes serve as a useful reference point when the two sides sit down to pore over a much weightier substantive bilateral agenda.
Interestingly, both Guyana and Suriname appear to be moving in the same significant direction simultaneously. Potentially fortune-changing oil discoveries have been made by the two countries within the space of a few years, the net effect of which has been the shining of an international spotlight on two countries that had long been considered to be among the hemisphere’s minnows.
To return to Sunday, the meeting between the two Presidents, unburdened by the strictures of a demanding agenda also allowed the two Presidents all of the elbow room they needed to make upbeat pronouncements regarding bilateral relations rather than have to face what would have been the far more demanding option of making weighty, mindfully worded statements. Next time around is almost certain to be different.